We are out of time, but I will take the two remaining Deputies.

I wish to raise with the Taoiseach the true reality of homelessness in this country. The Government’s most recent homeless figures are a smokescreen, as they are not the reality. The official figures do not include rough sleepers, couch surfers and homeless people in hospitals, prisons or domestic violence refuges. People are asking why the Government would just forget about and leave out so many people. The Government only collects data on those who access emergency accommodation. I call on the Taoiseach to publish the true figure for the number of families and individuals who make contact with local authorities on the basis that they consider themselves to be homeless and the outcomes in each case.

This morning, I spoke to nurses about their pre-budget submission. Not only were safe staffing levels and the need for legislation raised as being necessary, but they told me of nurses being forced to live hours away from their places of work, being exhausted going home at night, barely existing while paying enormous rents, never having a hope of owning their own homes, and more and more emigrating to Australia. What is the Taoiseach’s answer to these nurses?

Regarding the number of people who are in emergency accommodation, we do collect numbers on how many are in domestic violence refuges and so on. Those numbers are available. When it comes-----

No, the Government does not. They are not collected.

I will stand corrected if we do not, but we certainly know the number of places available in the refuges. I do not know how we could collect numbers on how many people are couch surfing, for example, but it is the case-----

By presentations.

Councils know.

-----that the emergency accommodation figures are only people who are in State-provided emergency accommodation.

On nursing, what can we do? As the Deputy knows, we are increasing the number of nurses employed in the health service all the time. I think we have about 6,000 or 7,000 more nurses and midwives working in our public health service than we had three years ago when this Government came to office. We are improving pay levels, having an agreement on pay with nurses. I imagine we will have another one, which will result in further pay increases in the period ahead. Despite the fact that there are many parts of the health service where we do not have enough nurses, if we look at it overall, the number of practising nurses that we have per head in Ireland is among the highest in the western world.